Stand on stage -- it's so old the faded curtain boasts of its ASBESTOS -- and you stand where the Marx Brothers and Mae West performed.

Stare over the house and you can imagine another Birmingham. There's a balcony up there, and a higher one where black patrons were once forced -- or allowed, as the old powers would have put it -- to watch vaudeville shows for the price of a quarter.

Will Rogers played here. And Milton Berle.

Which makes it ... bewildering.

You could live in Birmingham a lifetime and not know the majesty that stands in this building on the corner of Third Avenue North and 18th Street. It is still here somewhere, dirty, peeling and abused.

A beauty supply store once operated in the lobby, slapping green paint on the white marble walls, and hiding ornate plaster with a cheap drop ceiling. The theater itself was walled off in the '70s, after slipping briefly into porn.

There are reasons you might not know the Lyric.

Which makes it ... infuriating.

Because there may be plenty of reasons, but there is no excuse.

Birmingham's past is gritty and colorful and ... remarkable. It is ours. But instead of embracing it, reveling in it, the city -- and the Birmingham-Jefferson Civic Center Authority -- instead push for an artificial "entertainment district" that will cost millions and sit across the interstate from downtown.

Inside the Lyric a few years back. (Birmingham News -- Tamika Moore)

It is not the real Birmingham they seek to sell, but an in-town strip mall filled with chain restaurants and bars in a style modeled after someone else's city.

Do we want a downtown entertainment district? Sure. One that's already here.

It doesn't take Langfordian imagination to see it. The Lyric sits across from the Alabama, which is just around the block from McWane Center, which is just across from the Pizitz building, which is a few blocks up from the Railroad Park and a few more down from the Civil Rights Institute.

Which makes an entertainment district. It's here. It's real. It's organic. And it is uniquely Birmingham.

Which is why it is so ... bewildering that the Lyric has been left to rot in pigeon droppings for so long.

Until now, perhaps.

The group that restored the Alabama -- Birmingham Landmarks Inc. -- has also been trying to raise will to restore the Lyric. This month the Environmental Protection Agency will come to the Lyric to begin an EPA-sponsored environmental assessment, a realistic look at asbestos and lead paint in the building. EPA has also encouraged the group to apply for grants to pay for the cleanup it will suggest.

It might just be a turning point. To succeed, though, will take millions, plus volunteers, cooperation and elbow grease.

Will it happen? Who knows.

Should it? Sure.

Because of the history and the majesty and the ghosts, of course. And because we don't need to build an artificial entertainment district.